[asdff]

It absolutely makes a difference. I live a five minute walk from a camp of meth users. They smoke it and use needles in broad daylight, right in front of law enforcement. Their camps are a hotbed of drug trafficking, rape, theft, assaults, and prostitution. Some cartels run the camps themselves and demand rent from their victims. If this stuff was enforced these camps would be cleared out and people put in jail, but as it is in my county most people are let off bail and go on to commit further crimes sometimes within the same day (usually the case when picked up for catalytic converter theft or grand theft auto)

[barbs]

The fact that it's criminalized causes those sorts of marginalized camps and cartels to form in the first place. Even if they were cleared out, they would simply move elsewhere.

[asdff]

What I'm saying is that its de facto decriminalized and this is the result. If it were criminalized you wouldn't be able to live like this unhindered and unchecked on any particular piece of public land you can find. If it were decriminalized nominally, nothing would change, because people aren't being criminalized for meth use currently.

[barbs]

I'm not sure what you mean, drug possession is still criminalized? Has been for years, and drug use still happens, it just creates conditions which increase crime and unsafe use.

Unless, do you mean that the laws aren't enforced enough, hence the drug use outside law enforcement? I would argue that increased enforcement still doesn't help the problem, and crime and drug harm increase. Not to mention the public costs of enforcing these laws and imprisoning people on small drug charges with mandatory minimum sentences.

[asdff]

It's criminalized but cops don't enforce these laws, because the DA isn't going to prosecute a homeless person for these laws. Police cite them and release them and then you get stories like this (1) where people might get arrested and released for separate crimes three times in one day. I can find dozens and dozens of stories like this, some more tragic like the final crime of the day being a murder of an innocent victim.

Are these policies helping these people get their lives back on track? I'd say its clearly doing the exact opposite. By offering no consequence to bad behavior, bad behavior continues. If this person was arrested and taken into custody vs released, they'd at least be put into a controlled environment where they would be fed and sheltered and have their medical needs attended to, versus let out onto the street with no direction where they end up right back where they started.

There are costs to the public for sheltering and treating addicted and mentally unwell, certainly, but I'd argue the costs to the public of the status quo are much higher if you were to quantify them. All the petty crime, the emotional toll on innocent people victimized, the price of a life when innocent people are murdered by psychotic people on methamphetamine, the price of ER bills passed on to everyone from someone coming far too late on deaths door with zero insurance, versus the much cheaper price on preventative care that would prevent these situations in the first place, is not a cheap price. But by continuing this status quo this is the price we all bear.

1. https://abc7.com/california-zero-bail-prison-overcrowding-gl...